Then he remembered the laughter, the excited cries, the lounge-act applause, and revised his thinking. There was at least one thing that still got their motors running, one thing that still pushed their buttons. Spanker could have testified to that.
“Who’s in charge here?” Eddie asked. He was watching the intersec-tion behind the little group very carefully in case the others should get their courage back. So far he saw and heard nothing alarming from that direction. He thought that the others had probably left this ragged crew to its fate. They looked at each other uncertainly, and finally the woman with the blood-spattered face spoke up. “Spanker was, but when the god-drums started up this time, it was Spanker’s stone what come out of the hat and we set him to dance. I guess Winston would have come next, but you did for him with your god-rotted guns, so you did.” She wiped blood deliberately from her cheek, looked at it, and then returned her sullen glance to Eddie. “Well, what do you think Winston was trying to do to me with his god-rotted spear?” Eddie asked. He was disgusted to find the woman had actually made him feel guilty about what he had done. “Trim my sideburns?” “Killed Frank ‘n Luster, too,” she went on doggedly, “and what are you? Either Grays, which is bad, or a couple of god-rotted outlanders, which is worse. Who’s left for the Pubes in City North? Topsy, I sup-pose—Topsy the Sailor—but he ain’t here, is he? Took his boat and went off downriver, ay, so he did, and god rot him, too, says I!”
Susannah had ceased listening; her mind had fixed with horrified fascination on something the woman had said earlier. It was Spanker’s stone what come out of the hat and we set him to dance. She remembered reading Shirley Jackson’s story “The Lottery” in college and understood that these people, the degenerate descendents of the original Pubes, were living Jackson’s nightmare. No wonder they weren’t capable of any strong emotion when they knew they would have to participate in such a grisly drawing not once a year, as in the story, but two or three times each day.
“Why?” she asked the bloody woman in a harsh, horrified voice. “Why do you do it?”
The woman looked at Susannah as if she was the world’s biggest fool. “Why? So the ghosts what live in the machines won’t take over the bodies of those who have died here—Pubes and Grays alike—and send them up through the holes in the streets to eat us. Any fool knows that.” “There are no such things as ghosts,” Susannah said, and her voice sounded like so much meaningless quacking to her own ears. Of course there were. In this world, there were ghosts everywhere. Nevertheless, she pushed ahead. “What you call the god-drums is only a tape stuck in a machine. That’s really all it is.” Sudden inspiration struck her and she added: “Or maybe the Grays are doing it on purpose—did you ever think of that? They live in the other part of the city, don’t they? And under it, as well? They’ve always wanted you out. Maybe they’ve just hit on a really efficient way of getting you guys to do their work for them.”
The bloody woman was standing next to an elderly gent wearing what looked like the world’s oldest bowler hat and a pair of frayed khaki shorts. Now he stepped forward and spoke to her with a patina of good manners that turned his underlying contempt into a dagger with razor-sharp edges. “You are quite wrong, Madam Gunslinger. There are a great many machines under Lud, and there are ghosts in all of them— demonous spirits which bear only ill will to mortal men and women. These demon-ghosts are very capable of raising the dead . . . and in Lud, there are a great many dead to raise.” “Listen,” Eddie said. “Have you ever seen one of these zombies with your own eyes, Jeeves? Have any of you?”
Jeeves curled his lip and said nothing—but that lip-curl really said it all. What else could one expect, it asked, from outlanders who used guns as a substitute for understanding?
Eddie decided it would be best to close off the whole line of discus-sion. He had never been cut out for missionary work, anyway. He wag-gled the Ruger at the bloodstained woman. “You and your friend there— the one who looks like an English butler on his day off—are going to take us to the railroad station. After that, we can all say goodbye, and I’ll tell you the truth: that’s going to make my f**kin day.”
“Railroad station?” the guy who looked like Jeeves the Butler asked. “What is a railroad station?”